Let’s also keep in mind that SC didn’t adopt the CBF until the early 1960s, which makes it look a lot more like “Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever” than “My great grand-daddy died on the field of honor”.
Someone wearing the Christian cross had better be willing to deal with the consequences of wearing a symbol of the inquisition. Absolutely.
Now: What are the consequences?
I will gladly and cheerfully admit that not only have I never lived in the South, I’ve only visited the region twice in my life. Nevertheless, the cartoonish Dukes of Hazzard prominently displayed a Battle Flag (well, a car with a painted flag on its roof) without being racist about it.
Similarly, DC Comics had a running feature called “The Haunted Tank” that ran from 1961 to 1987 in their G.I. Combat anthology series. The tank’s commander, Jeb Stuart, routinely gets advice from the ghost of his Confederate namesake, General J.E.B. Stuart, and has the tank fly a nonregulation Confederate flag.
I don’t assume the writers of Dukes or Haunted Tank were racist, just possessing an overly-romantic view of the Civil War, which they then present to, well, children…
I think my generation might have been brainwashed.
Frylock, nobody expects to hear that question. (someone was going to go there; might as well be me)
“Whoa, yeah! That was bad, wasn’t it? Glad the Catholics don’t do that anymore.” Zero consequences. Maybe a moment for education.
That is also said by some flag-wavers. The problem is, the flag (whichever goddamn Confederate flag) is still used by by many racists and domestic terrorists, while many of the most hate-filled cross-wearers aren’t Catholic. The connection has mostly been lost.
I think the DOH were a significant influence in redefining what the Confederate Flag represented.
If a good word/symbol can eventually be turned into a racist word or dog whistle is not the opposite possible?
Though I will admit the Hitler stache or the KKK pillow cases probably have further to travel to reach a acceptable redefinition.
And why did the United States maintain the institution of slavery after Independence was won? Because union was so shaky in the early days that compromises had to be made. Certain states would have withdrawn from the Union if the abolition of slavery had been written directly into the Constitution, as many wanted. Specifically, the states of the South. The same states who did, in fact, withdraw decades later, when a president who was known to hate slavery and who was rumored to be planning to abolish it got elected.
The United States was founded on lofty ideals that it’s never entirely been able to live up to, and there are stains in its history where it chose to ignore its ideals. Slavery is one of the worst of them, and it maintained slavery because the South was so dead set against abolishing it. The Confederate States was founded on the principle of maintaining slavery, because it looked to the Southern plantation owners like the high-minded idealists of the rest of the United States were on the verge of finally forcing them to take the ideals of “equality” and “liberty” seriously.
So yes, the CSA was worse than the USA. Both had slavery, and that’s a disgusting, shameful fact. However, slavery was an ugly compromise for the USA and the foundational principle of the CSA. For the four years it existed, the entire reason for being of the CSA was the fight against the “tyrant” who, they wrongly believed, intended to take their slaves away. The USA was founded with slavery. The CSA was founded on slavery.
Claiming the CSA was a somehow “worse” country than the USA is horseshit because they had the EXACT SAME Constitution. (There were a few minor differences, such as using the word “slave” and a 6-year term for the President, but all the brilliant aspects such as separation of powers, checks and balances, and the Bill of Rights were protected by the Confederacy, for white people, just like in the Union.)
Slavery was JUST AS BAD in the North as in the South. Slaves were not beaten more, or fed less, or treated less respectfully down South. Slavery was fucking horrible in every state where it existed.
The fact that slavery was abolished in SOME northern states reflects economic realities, not moral ones. Slavery wasn’t profitable in New England because of a shorter growing season, and poor whites objected to competing with slaves for the laboring jobs that were available. And NO northern state “freed” any slaves. Dates to end slavery were always set far in the future to allow owners to “sell them down the river” and recoup their investment. Slaves were only freed by owners, not northern state gov’ts. Hell, the Emancipation Proclamation specifically EXCLUDED northern slaves. Tell me again how pure the hearts of northerners were.
I realize what this thread is about and that my argument undercuts demonization of the Confederacy because the Union was just as bad. I get that I’m taking the fun out of saying, “a battle flag is the same as a Klan hood” by pointing out that slavery was longer, later, and more widespread under the Stars and Stripes.
I hope that’s the reason for the slavery apologists who have shown up in this thread. Because if any of you honestly believe that slavery was fundamentally worse under the Confederacy, or that the USA is not far more culpable for slavery than a failed, unrecognized, 5-year rebellious state, you are deluding yourselves.
(In case it wasn’t clear, that was my intended point–the question was rhetorical. Which of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have answered it!)
This is as silly an argument as your lame pedantic attempt to score points by belaboring the well-known differences between the confederate battle flag and other confederate flags.
The difference between the CSA and the USA is that only one of these countries was explicitly founded for the purpose of preserving slavery. As such, symbols of the CSA are necessarily symbols of preserving slavery. This does not diminish the horrors of slavery in the USA–but symbols of the USA may be symbols of other facets of the country, whereas the entire reason for the existence of the CSA was to brutally subjugate certain US citizens. A purpose identical to that of the KKK.
John, a similar distinction may be drawn between the confederate flag and the crucifix. While the Inquisition was a part of of Christianity, it wasn’t the entire point of the enterprise. If someone marches around wearing this symbol–the seal of the office of the Inquisition–then yeah, a similar objection applies.
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Huh. What conclusion do you arrive at?
On the surface it seems like a reasonable argument. But the fundamental flaw is when you analyze what these symbols mean to different people from the perspective that they share the knowledge and logic you have.
The KKK hood like the Nazi flag are both almost universally associated with reviled organizations. Outside of wargaming or history I don’t see anyone but neo-Nazi types with the Nazi flag. Same with the KKK hood. Outside of entertainment you just don’t see it. Unless you are in the Klan.
With the Confederate Flag, sure the educated and dare say easily offended brigade know about the complete history of it’s use. But to the average good ol’ boy or other Southerner who is isn’t as educated as you folks are it could very well mean, to them, Southern stuff.
You think Bo and Luke Duke were advocating enslaving black people and lynching people from the tree? But they are fiction!!! Well fictional characters still have backgrounds and motivations and I doubt it. And many others probably just wear it casually and don’t put any thought into it.
My take on the Confederate Flag is some display it for racial reasons. Some don’t. Some people use racial epithets in a racist manner. Some don’t. But aside from the random Halloween goer I don’t think the same applies to the KKK hood.
Boom! That’s one straw man successfully slain!
We’re not saying slavery was worse in the Confederacy. We’re saying the Confederacy was worse because slavery was its foundational principle. The USA had slavery because of history and compromise. The CSA had it as its sine qua non. That’s why people regard Confederate symbols as inherently racist and not Union symbols. In the USA, racism has always been in conflict with the ideals, and we’ve had a long, hard, ugly struggle about it from the beginning. In the CSA, racism was the ideal. If you genuinely can’t understand why that’s worse, then there’s nothing else I can say that will help.
Symbols and words evolve and what they mean to one set at one point in time doesn’t necessarily equate to what they mean to another set at a different point in time. Swastika is a good example. Hammer and sickle is as well. Swastika to the educated could mean a religious symbol, whereas the casual viewer is going to think Nazi. Even with the non rotated versions. The hammer and sickle used to represent a genocidal empire. Now you’ll see college kids wearing it as some form of fashion statement on campuses, trying to be edgy or something. Are those college kids supporting a genocidal empire?
I’m not even sure what your point is, but wrong tense. Not “are”, were. Same goes for the Confederacy. Even more so since the Confederacy doesn’t even exist anymore.
The best that can be said about them is that they’re comfortably ignorant of the symbol’s meaning.
Even here, though, it’s not a great comparison. Yes, the Soviet Union was a horrifying fuckup of a country. But that was not its explicit purpose. The explicit purpose of the CSA was to perpetuate slavery, just as the explicit purpose of the Klan is to perpetuate white supremacy.
Again, it’s possible to make your comparison good. A college kid who wears this symbol–the seal of the Soviet secret police–is equivalent to a person who waves the confederate flag.
See Doorhinge’s subsequent post for the consequences.
And as to your second point, there are consequences of using these symbols now. I was asking, what are the consequences of wearing the cross now, esp. as regards associations with the Inquisition.
The answer (to preview what Doorhinge aptly said in explicating the point) is that there are no real such consequences to speak of when it comes to the cross wearing, and that there are real such consequences when it comes to CF bearing.
Because you know the South’s reasons for secession was to continue and expand the evil of slavery you find the symbols associated with that era of the south to be reprehensible. You are still making the assumption that other people share the knowledge you share and share the sensibilities you share. For many people, myself included, up until the point I was educated about what you know for example, I just looked at that flag as part of the South. I looked at it as the symbol of a rebelling army and there have been many of those in our history.
And when you see the flag on toys, tv shows, the Muppets, etc one does not immediately say to oneself “slavery slavery slavery.” It almost becomes a regional symbol at that point. Now all I’m saying is before you assign motive to people using a symbol or a word you should realize there knowledge and life experience is not your own.
I’m aware of what that flag means to many and I live in the South and wouldn’t have a Confederate Flag pole. But I’m not going to prejudge someone else who does. Now if they have a Klan hood and robe on, a cross and some gasoline well I don’t think it’s prejudiced to know what that signals.
LHoD just said that anyone in that position is “comfortably ignorant.” He made no assumptions about what they must know, he simply said that if that’s what they know, they are “comfortably ignorant.”
That was in reference to the hammer and sickle and then he said it wasn’t a good comparison because the USSR wasn’t explicitly created as a slaver state. Then he showed me a symbol he thought would be more appropriate for an analogy. Thanks for trying to help though.
I have trouble finding this in the US Constitution. Can you help?
*(4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed. *
Or is the guaranteed constitutional right to own other people one of those “minor differences” between the US Constitution and that of the CSA?
Wait, what?